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Silent Spring by Rachel Carson Silent Spring, released in 1962, offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists. Rachel Carson's book focused on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that led to dangerous chemicals to the food source. Carson argued that those chemicals were more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Presented with thorough documentation, the book opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work. |
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The Lorax by Dr. Suess When Dr. Seuss gets serious, you know it must be important. Published in 1971, and perhaps inspired by the "save our planet" mindset of the 1960s, The Lorax is an ecological warning that still rings true today amidst the dangers of clear-cutting, pollution, and disregard for the earth's environment. In The Lorax, we find what we've come to expect from the illustrious doctor: brilliantly whimsical rhymes, delightfully original creatures, and weirdly undulating illustrations. But here there is also something more--a powerful message that Seuss implores both adults and children to heed. |
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A Sand County Almanc by Aldo Leopold
These astonishing portraits of the natural world explore the breathtaking diversity of the unspoiled American landscape -- the mountains and the prairies, the deserts and the coastlines. A stunning tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect the world we love. "There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot."--Aldo Leopold. |
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The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey Ed Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief. The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners. As they do, his characters voice Abbey's concerns about wilderness preservation ("Hell of a place to lose a cow," Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. "Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place... to lose. Period"). Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. It's comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert. --Gregory McNamee |
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Hayduke Lives!: A Novel by Edward Abbey Ed Abbey's 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, ended with a classic--and literal--cliffhanger: it left its hero, George Washington Hayduke III, clinging to a sheer rock face in the wilds of Utah as an armed posse hunted him down for his eco-radicalist crimes. Hayduke Lives! allows the grizzled Vietnam veteran another day in the sun, reunited with his old comrades Doc Sarvis, Seldom Seen Smith, and Bonnie Abbzug to battle the world's biggest earthmoving machine, the aptly named GOLIATH. Their principal foe, apart from that behemoth, is the fundamentalist preacher Dudley Love, the mastermind behind uranium mines, power plants, and other insults to Abbey's beloved desert. Abbey has great fun lampooning the pretensions of environmental activists, New Agers ("vee put flowers on zee Big Bucket, vee put flowers on zee driver's neck and hug heem? her? it? and kiss and luff and squeeze and make GOLIATH stop," says one starry-eyed European crystal gazer), and developers alike as he unfolds his tale of a motorized Wild West and its latter-day outlaw heroes. As full of improbable situations and noisy politics as Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke Lives! proves to be great fun for readers as well. --Gregory McNamee |
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Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey With language as colorful as a Canyonlands sunset and a perspective as pointed as a prickly pear, Cactus Ed captures the heat, mystery, and surprising bounty of desert life. Desert Solitaire is a meditation on the stark landscapes of the red-rock West, a passionate vote for wilderness, and a howling lament for the commercialization of the American outback. |
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Walden by Henry David Thoreau In March 1845 Henry David Thoreau "borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond" where he lived for more than two. A twentieth-century heir to Thoreau reveals to a new generation of readers how intensely practical Thoreau's vision in WALDEN is for those of us living our lives at the cusp of the new millennium. McKibben's relevant and lively introduction and annotations to the 1854 edition make us see WALDEN as, among other things, a way to think about how we use our time, how we spend our money and how to live essential lives. |
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Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau With their call for"simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!", for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature. The selections in tis volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity, Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle. A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature -- and of himself -- is recorded in selections from A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods and The Journal |
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In Wildness is the Preservation of the World writings by Henry David Thoreau with photographs by
Elliot Porter A stunning presentation of one of America's leading photographers and artistic pioneers, this is Eliot Porter's interpretation of the works of Henry Thoreauin a paperback edition of one of the most famous and bestselling Sierra Club Exhibit Format Books. 72 color photographs. |
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Mountaineering Essays by John Muir One of the world’s foremost nature writers, John Muir also founded the Sierra Club in 1892 as a way of supporting his belief that Americans must preserve national parks throughout the country in order that future generations might be spiritually inspired. Characterized by an iron endurance and an insatiable curiosity, Muir vowed to spend his days studying God’s unwritten Bible--nature--or what he termed the "University of the Wilderness." Muir early on learned to keep a journal in the manner of Emerson, but he is also considered one of American’s pioneer glaciologists, an interest he gained while wandering in Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Whether frozen in a subzero blizzard on Mount Shasta, seemingly doomed on the unforgiving slopes of Mount Ritter, or exhilarated by the ice-scapes viewed from the summit of Mount Rainier, Muir reveled in the mountain experience. This volume contains eleven mountain essays that include both adventurous narrative, joyful exhalation, and descriptions of natural features such as alpine soil beds, ancient and living glaciers, and mountain sculpture. In each, Muir maintains a careful and subtle balance between the physical aspects of ascending and the more symbolic observations of the sublimity of his surroundings. The rich combination of spiritual and philosophical elements in these essays shows how human spirit and nature fuse in the presence of mountains and demonstrate that mountains must be preserved so that they may preserve us. |
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John Muir In His Own Words: A Book of Quotations Many of Muir's best passages were written in different locations since he frequently wrote for newspapers and magazines, and then later edited his writings for book publication. So, there are sometimes two or three slightly different versions of the same Muir quote! In addition, some of his most memorable quotes come from his journals, only part of which have ever been published. One way of finding many of Muir's best quotes is available through this 1988 compilation by Peter Browning. Browning has selected quotations from Muir filling 74 pages, arranged chronologically. |
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America's Wilderness: The Photographs of Ansel Adams with the Writings of John Muir In this magnificent volume, the land Adams loved and strived to portect endures as he saw it--undefiled, incomparable--championed in the most eloquent and impassioned words Adams ever wrote. Quotes from noted naturalist John Muir, who started the conservation movement with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892, are paired with Ansel Adams's evocative photographs of Grand Canyon National Park, Kings River Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and others. These photographs were commissioned by the Interior Department as part of a mural project and intended to decorate the walls of its Washington, D.C., headquarters. 124 b&w photos. |
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Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems Complete and Unabridged Robert Frost's poetry was always simple and direct, yet strangely deep. Many of his poems were celebrations of the natural world. This is the only comprehensive volume of Frost's published verse, including the contents of all eleven of his individual books of poetry. |
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Leaves of Grassby Walt Whitman One of the great innovative figures in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves Of Grass is his one book. First published in 1855 with only twelve poems, it was greeted by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the wonderful gift . . . the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Over the course of Whitman's life, the book reappeared in many versions, expanded and transformed as the author's experiences and the nation's history changed and grew. Whitman's ambition was to creates something uniquely American. In that he succeeded. His poems have been woven into the very fabric of the American character. From his solemn masterpieces "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to the joyous freedom of "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "Song of the Open Road," Whitman's work lives on, an inspiration to the poets of later generations. |
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